FanGraphs Baseball

Position: Texas Rangers TrackMan Operators

Locations: Surprise, AZ; Adelanto, CA; Round Rock, TX; Spokane, WA

Description:
The TrackMan operator will be responsible for running TrackMan system, and one is desired for each Rangers affiliate. The position runs from April to mid-September for Adelanto, Round Rock and Surprise, and mid-June to mid-September for Spokane.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for setting up rosters and tagging the information.
• Track/chart information for the entire game – monitoring the system and making any changes throughout the game (i.e. roster changes, defensive substitutions, etc.).
• Responsible for fixing any errors, uploading the game to the TrackMan system, and running data and reports for coaches/front office staff.

Qualifications:

• Must be able to work all home games.
• Previous experience with TrackMan System is preferred but not required.
• Must have strong attention to detail and ability to communicate well with others.
• Strong preference will be given to local applicants at each location.

Compensation:
This position is compensated.

To Apply:
Interested applicants can email their materials to abrenner@texasrangers.com. Please specify which location you are applying for.

Plenty of people over the years have questioned Alex Wood’s ability to remain a starting pitcher, but what you at least couldn’t question, for a time, was how Wood as a starter performed. He was effective as a rookie in 2013, and then the next year, he posted numbers that, from an objective perspective, looked like they could’ve belonged to Cole Hamels. Wood struck out a quarter of the batters he faced, and while he’s never going to totally escape the skepticism, Wood looked like he was on to something. Then 2015 happened, and everything got worse. Wood found himself on the outside of the Dodgers’ rotation, looking in.

There’s a reason the Dodgers assembled so much depth, though — they knew they might run into injury problems, and already, it looks like Wood is going to be needed. That would be a good opportunity for anyone, but Wood feels like this is a chance to show off some adjustments he’s made. Everyone who shows up to spring training has a path to get better. Yet Wood isn’t trying to do anything new. If anything, he’s worked to be more like the Wood of old.

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On multiple occasions last year, the author published a statistical report designed to serve as a mostly responsible shorthand for people who, like the author, possess more enthusiasm for collegiate baseball than expert knowledge of it. Those reports integrated concepts central to much of the analysis found at FanGraphs — regarding sample size and regression, for example — to provide something not unlike a “true talent” leaderboard for hitters and pitchers in select conferences.

Last week, I published the first such report for the 2016 college campaign. What follows represents the second one.

As in the original edition of this same thing, what I’ve done here is to utilize principles introduced by Chris Mitchell on forecasting future major-league performance with minor-league stats.

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Cam Bedrosian features a fastball with velocity and jump. The 24-year-old right-hander’s four-seamer averaged 94.4 mph last year. What he lacks is consistency and command. He fanned more a batter per inning in 34 appearances out of the Angels bullpen, but his ERA was an unseemly 5.40.

The son of former All-Star closer Steve Bedrosian, and the 29th-overall pick in the 2010 draft, Bedrosian augments his heater with sliders and a modicum of changeups. The former flashes plus, but doesn’t always break as planned. The latter — a pitch he’s considered scrapping — has been a minus.

Bedrosian discussed his repertoire, and where he needs to locate in order to be effective, at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

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Bedrosian on having a high four-seam spin rate: “The first time I heard that was last year. I’d heard about spin rate, but didn’t really know much about it. A couple guys on our team were talking about it, and I guess I was one of the leaders. I knew what my ball did, but I never put the two together and assumed I had a high spin rate. I know there are team that look at that.

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How much can a one-dollar bill buy? Well, one dollar’s worth, right? But, what happens to that dollar after you spend it? It goes to someone else and then they spend it and it goes to someone else and they spend it and on and on down the line. In 2014, the average one-dollar bill had bought $638 worth of goods and services by the time it was removed from circulation. There’s even a term for this phenomenon — one with which, as a baseball fan, you’re likely familiar, although in a different context. It’s called the “velocity of money,” and you can see how this might tell us something useful about the economy.

Of course, it tells us nothing useful about baseball players. But what about baseball players themselves? Do ballplayers have a velocity? Some do, it would seem.

Unlike dollar bills, ballplayers are all a little bit different from each other in ways that alter their value. But like dollar bills, baseball players are used as currency to make trades for other baseball players. To figure out a player’s “velocity,” we could add up the total value of all the players teams acquired in exchange for him since the time they were traded for each other. We’re not concerned for which team that value was generated or how much the player was paid at the time. The only issue here is how much value an individual player has generated in terms of total career value in return.

Take, for example, the case of Mark Teixeira. Despite having now spent over half his career with the New York Yankees, Teixeira was integral not merely to one, but two, relatively high-profile deals — first for Casey Kotchman and then, in a second deal, Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Kotchman has been worth a total of -0.1 WAR since he was dealt for Teixeira, while Andrus, Feliz, Harrison, and Saltalamacchia have been worth 18.7, 4.7, 7.5, and 8.9, respectively. Thus, Teixeira has bought 39.7 WAR over the life of his career. That figure, just under 40 wins, represents his “velocity.”

When I first came up with this idea, I thought the thing to do was to explain the concept and then apply it to a comprehensive list of all transactions and develop a list of players who’ve produced the highest velocity in their careers. Sounds vaguely interesting, right? Okay, let’s do this!

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Over the last few years, the Dodgers have made it pretty clear that, when it comes to pitching, they’re willing to take some health risks in order to get talent upside. To that end, they’ve signed pitchers like Scott Kazmir, Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, and Brandon Beachy as free agents, all of whom have put up very good performances at times, but all of whom have had significant medical issues throughout their careers. This winter, they attempted to sign Hisashi Iwakuma, but backed off due to concerns with his physical, and then signed an incentive-laden deal with Kenta Maeda, who reportedly had some pretty ugly medicals himself. And this doesn’t even count Hyun-Jin Ryu — who wasn’t recently acquired, but is returning from shoulder surgery — or Alex Wood, a pitcher with a delivery so awkward that his long-term health was one of the main reasons the Braves traded him to Los Angeles to begin with.

The 2016 Dodgers rotation was essentially Clayton Kershaw and then some combination of four high-risk pitchers with health problems. We’re only a couple of weeks into spring training, but the downside of pursuing this strategy is already starting to show through the cracks.

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Last season, major-league baseball teams, on average, used 23 different position players throughout the course of the year. On Opening Day, most every club will carry 13, and it’s easy to just think of that as this year’s team. Those 13 guys are the team that’s there on Opening Day, that’s the team that will be there at the All-Star break, and, God willing, that’s the team that will be there come playoff time.

Of course, that isn’t ever the case, and I don’t mean to question your intelligence by assuming you might actually believe the New York Yankees were only going to use 13 position players this year. It’s just, sometimes, when you start mapping out a season in your head for a certain team with World Series aspirations, it’s easy to forget in March that, “Oh yeah, Pete Kozma is probably going to have to play for the Yankees at some point this year.”

Backups are going to play, and, like any player, backups are going to have to try and make an impact for some contending ballclubs. Most won’t. But some will! Some of these guys are really going to matter. And it’s probably worth exploring who might stand the best chance.

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12:00

enos brain:

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Now that all the possible arbitration cases have been settled and all the offseason’s major free agents signed (apologies to David Freese and Austin Jackson), teams can turn their respective attentions towards locking up young players to contract extensions that buy out potentially expensive free-agent seasons. Earlier this week, the Royals and Salvador Perez agreed to a deal, although that amounted more to the restructuring of a previous deal and less a typical extension. Rather, the first standard pre-arbitration extension of the spring comes from the St. Louis Cardinals, who could get a decent bargain in Kolten Wong despite the second baseman’s lack of huge upside.

Wong’s service-time situation made him an ideal candidate for a contract extension. Wong is one year away from arbitration, so he was looking at the Major League Baseball minimum salary (or something very close to it) this season, with three seasons of arbitration to follow before he could hit free agency. The contract with the Cardinals is for five years and $24.5 million, with a $12.5 million option with a $1 million dollar buyout for the sixth season, making the guarantee $25.5 million. The guarantee is fairly low and has the potential to buy out two seasons of free agency when Wong will be 29 and 30 years old, respectively. Wong has shown himself to be an average player in his two full seasons in the big leagues and continuing to be average will make this deal a worthwhile one for the Cardinals — although Wong has shown some potential for more.

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Maybe you remember, but a couple of years ago, Bill James went on a rant about ground-ball pitchers. It started with a bang:

Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball. Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball, in any era, and what you will find is that 80% of them are not ground ball pitchers. They’re fly ball pitchers.

And it got louder. James felt that they got injured often, and flamed out. “They’re great for two years, and then they blow up,” he wrote. “Always.”

The response was swift.

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